Rafael Canas |
Paris (EFE) ” and with “a little more serenity”.
The fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s death is celebrated tomorrow, Saturday, and France and Spain have been celebrating Picasso Year together for months now to remember the immense work of the artist born in Malaga in 1881 and who died in 1973 in Mougins (France), which Debray considers “a fundamental artist for modern art”.
One of the issues that has been most discussed in recent decades about Picasso is his relationship with the women in his life and his behavior, to say the least, abusive, with special criticism from current feminism.
“I think it is necessary to look at this question, that it is necessary to reread the work”, but avoiding “visceral” reactions and betting on a more historical analysis, considers the person in charge of the largest museum dedicated exclusively to the artist in the world.
Debray acknowledges that the artist “was not the best father or the best companion”, but stresses that this vision is worth “anachronism”, since “we look at Picasso today as if he were a man of our time, which is not the case”. .
For this reason, he invites young art historians to “take up this matter again and treat it with more distance and in a more historical way”, with academic tools that are not “rumor or very affective testimonies” and thus review Picasso’s work “with a little more serenity.”
“The Picassian identity of Spain”
Despite the fact that practically everything has already been said about Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Debray considers that there are still things to explore about the artist: “There remains a formidable exhibition to be done on the relationship of Spain with Picasso, that is, Picasso’s Spanish identity or of the Picassian identity of Spain”, he opines.
However, he emphasizes that the trajectory of art “evolves with its time”, so “there are still many things to know about Picasso”, although he asks for an analysis with the tools of history.
For this reason, it also flatly rejects the accusations that were leveled against Picasso for not leaving Paris during the Nazi occupation in World War II, between 1940 and 1944, and the fact that he did not sign a petition of intellectuals and artists so that the Gestapo released the writer and painter Max Jacob, a friend of his sent to the Drancy internment camp, where he died of illness.
He explains that this “outrageous” accusation originated from the French extreme right and “is totally false”: “Picasso wanted to sign the petition, but his friends told him not to, since he would have put himself in danger”, being on file by the German authorities as an anti-Francoist and “degenerate artist”.
Regarding the controversies surrounding the artist, he stresses that “we are too close” to Picasso, but predicts that “in the coming decades his work will end up declining in relation to his biography” and his production will be seen “like that of Titian or that of Miguel Angel”.
And he believes that the artist’s enormous popularity around the world is due as much to his longevity and his work with the main artistic currents of the 20th century, as well as his prowess with many mediums: “He was a great painter, a great sculptor and a great draftsman”, he lists, in addition to his experience in ceramics and other artistic forms.
An “important” museum in Paris
On a more personal side, he considers it “a challenge” to be in charge of this institution dedicated to a single edge, in a city with “a cultural ecosystem” like Paris, which also has other great state museums such as the Louvre or the Orsay, in addition to the Pompidou (contemporary art) or the Orangerie (modern art), but still believes that it exercises an “important” role.
Founded in 1985 and expanded in 2014, the Picasso Museum is housed in the Salé Palace, one of the Marais area’s 17th-century Baroque mansions, which in recent decades has become one of the trending areas for arts and culture. French capital fashion.
Its holdings include more than 5,000 works by Picasso and some by other artists that were part of his private collection and donation agreements with his relatives or donations from collectors, as well as 200,000 documentary pieces, which is why it is also a reference for researchers.
But its president insists that Picasso is also open to other artists, as shown by the current Faith Ringold exhibition, the first retrospective of this New York artist to be held in Europe.
For this anniversary, the museum presented an exhibition at the end of March in which the British fashion designer Paul Smith chose a series of works and organized them according to his idea of color, to “give it more humour”, explains Debray.
This has allowed “to show a more playful, more spiritual Picasso, also more humane”.